Electric vehicles (EVs) including hybrid electric vehicles have become more popular in recent years. Such electric vehicles must be charged when the charge level of their battery becomes low. Although many people charge their electric vehicles at home, they also oftentimes use shared charging stations to charge their electric vehicle. Unfortunately such charging stations are not readily available. Moreover, even when shared charging stations are available, in many cases they cannot accommodate the demand. The number of electric vehicles that would like to use a station at any given time is greater than the number of available stations.
In addition, because it can take a substantial amount of time (e.g., 3 hours or more for some electric vehicles) to fully charge an electric vehicle, the owner will often leave while the vehicle is charging and may not be present once the electric vehicle is fully charged. Thus, the vehicle may occupy the station for far longer than necessary. This can be frustrating to others who are waiting to charge their electric vehicles.
It would be ideal if the owner who is using the charging station could simply leave their key or fob in the electric vehicle while it is charging so that once it is fully charged anyone who is waiting could move it and use the charging station. However, this is impractical for a number of reasons. For example, the electric vehicle could be moved before it is fully charged, or stolen, etc. As such, most owners are reluctant to do this.
It would be desirable to provide methods, systems and apparatus that allow someone other than the owner of an electric vehicle to operate the vehicle when the owner is not present. Other desirable features and characteristics of the disclosed embodiments will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.